


Gift Shop

by Distractivate



Series: The Room(s) Where It Happened [6]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Art, Developing Relationship, Introspection, M/M, Making Up Is Hard To Do, Post 4.08 The Jazzaguy, Postcards, Sex Motel Series, Sherwood Motel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:41:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22965586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Distractivate/pseuds/Distractivate
Summary: David this wasn't meant to be some Advent calendar of apologies. It was like an olive branch to get you to talk to me.Patrick sends an olive branch after the barbecue.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Series: The Room(s) Where It Happened [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644181
Comments: 90
Kudos: 243





	Gift Shop

**Author's Note:**

> ⚠️I recommend reading with your screen turned horizontally to view the images.⚠️
> 
> Set shortly after the events in The Jazzaguy (S4E8), while David is still keeping his distance. This fic is part of a group project exploring the ways David and Patrick might have used the Sherwood Motel (the motel Johnny and Roland buy in Season 6) to _connect_ before Patrick gets his own apartment.
> 
> You don’t have to have to read the series to understand this but I highly recommend every single one.

Patrick remembers the first postcard he ever sent. It was on a family road trip to Niagara Falls when he was six or seven. His dad was changing jobs and money was tight, so his parents suggested they each send a postcard home as a souvenir. Something cheap and personal and lasting to remember their trip. The Brewers have been sending postcards to each other ever since, any time they wandered a sufficient distance from home. He still has the postcards his mom and dad sent him in the closet at Ray’s, stacked neatly in the box of memories that he wanted to keep with him when he fled. The postcard he sent his mom from that trip, penned in his chaotic just-learning-to-write hand, is still tucked into the frame of the mirror on her dresser.

Patrick likes the tactile, low-tech nature of postcards. He likes that they are efficient and compact. He likes the process of shopping for them, of sifting through racks and racks of landmarks and landscapes at little downtown storefronts and airport gift shops and roadside attractions. He likes the unassuming surprise of them, materializing without fanfare in a stack of mail amid bills and flyers. He likes that they set out as the perfect presentation of place, and arrive with the ordeal of distance worn into the tattered corners and smeared ink and scuffed images. And he loves the way postcards close that distance, how the briefest of notes scrawled on the back of a photo can rocket him back to the way it felt in that specific time and place.

It might not work for David. Nothing he’s tried so far has worked. But he’s going to keep trying until David tells him to stop.

So now he’s in the gift shop of the motel where he and David have dumped a fair share of their earnings for the blissfully uninterrupted opportunity to learn the contours and depths of each other. It’s not really a gift shop. It’s just a corner of the Sherwood Motel lobby featuring a few toiletries, a couple of books about rural roadside motels and agritourism, Gel Time condoms, several snack items (also disturbingly Gel Time brand), batteries, a couple of generic Ontario T-shirts, a Robin Hood Christmas ornament, and a stack of postcards that look like they haven’t been redesigned, much less sold, since the 1960s. 

He takes one and hands it and a five-dollar bill to Betty at the counter who says cheerily, “Good to see you today, Mr. Versace.” Patrick wills away the heat rising in his cheeks at Betty’s smile that knows him by name while also knowing by now that it’s not his name. She pokes at the ancient cash register until it shoots open the drawer with a screech of protest. She returns the change with his postcard and a stamp. 

He borrows a pen from the cup on the counter and tries to come up with something, anything, that might get David to talk to him. He scratches a few ideas on the back of the receipt while he ponders. A poem maybe. Something short and cheesy might encourage David’s quick grin to defy his more discerning tastes. He has tried begging and pleading and asking and apologizing already. Maybe it’s enough to just record, briefly, this time and place. And hope it closes the distance. 

**Author's Note:**

> I’m choosing to believe Patrick’s love of postcards is canon since he has some on the fridge of his apartment. The motel on this postcard is the filming location for the Sherwood Motel/new Rosebud Motel in S6. I designed the sign and the postcard. Thanks to my fellow Rosebuddies for letting me take the easy way out on this fun group porn-writing project.
> 
> Thanks especially to [missgeevious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missgeevious/pseuds/missgeevious) for the idea for the Sherwood Motel slogan, to [DelilahMcMuffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DelilahMcMuffin/pseuds/DelilahMcMuffin) for the origins of the Mr. Versace code name in the first fic of this series, and to [Likerealpeopledo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo) for brainstorming.


End file.
